


The Future of Tomorrow

by micehell



Category: Johnny's Entertainment
Genre: AU (Keitai Sousakan 7), Humor, M/M, a tad odd ;)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-07
Updated: 2011-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-11 12:05:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/478380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/micehell/pseuds/micehell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five of them are not particularly average teenage boys, the other five are walking, talking cell phones, and together, they fight crime!</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Future of Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [](http://je-holiday.livejournal.com/profile)[**je_holiday**](http://je-holiday.livejournal.com/) fic exchange. Based on the drama _Keitai Sousakan 7_ (which is also where the title came from), which is pretty odd in the first place (but excellent all the same!), and then I might have made it a tiny bit odder all things considered. *snork*

Since he’d wound up working for Johnny’s, one of the things Aiba had had the hardest time getting used to was waking up to a walking, talking mobile phone right in front of his face. But no matter how many times he said it was bad for his heart (and a little bit dangerous in regards to his bladder) to wake up to Mabo’s glowing LCD eyes just inches from his own, that pixel-generated smile still seemed more than just a tiny bit amused at Aiba’s startled yell. Mabo always insisted that it was only polite that he greet Aiba properly in the morning.

A month into his training, and Aiba had at least learned to shake off his morning scare fairly easily. He still sometimes stuffed Mabo in his desk drawer while he went to take his shower, but he always at least acted like he was sorry about it afterward.

That particular morning he was eating a quick breakfast while finishing up his homework, ignoring both his family’s usual clamor and the _you should have finished that last night_ text messages Mabo kept sending to his regular cell phone, when he heard the opening strains to _Kamen Budokai_ , the agency ring tone for an assignment. It was just one more thing Aiba found hard to get used to, especially since his mother said it reminded her of her own teenage years and kept insisting on singing along. He picked up Mabo and held him to his ear, trying to act like it was just an average cell phone and that it was just an average call.

Sakurai’s voice was, as usual, calm and concise, but not particularly friendly. Like a lot of the agency, he hadn’t been happy with the way Aiba had joined, but he was professional about it. “We have an emergency situation at the Ikuta-Yamashita Industries building. A former employee has taken an elevator hostage and is threatening to drop it, along with most of the board of directors who happen to be in it. Get down there ASAP.”

He hung up before Aiba could ask any questions, or even mention the fact that he was supposed to be in school so it wasn’t like he could ask his parents for a lift. But then the agency’s sometimes unreasonable expectations _were_ something Aiba had gotten used to, so he just took Mabo and his bike and left.

The Ikuta-Yamashita building was fifty stories of high-tech glass and chrome, with an express elevator that could move from top to bottom in just about the amount of time it would take the elevator to fall, but without the subsequent damage to the passengers. By the time Aiba had arrived, sweating and puffing and wishing he hadn’t had those eggs for breakfast, the former employee had already run a quick demonstration that he didn’t mind the subsequent damage to the passengers, his voice gleefully amused as he sent his demands along with a streamed video of the board of directors all tumbled in one big bruised pile of suits and outrage.

Sakurai nodded at Aiba, but didn’t stop for greetings as he turned to his own cell phone. “Have you got a location on where the elevator hack is coming from?”

Gussan was a phone of few words, tending to be laid back and mellow, unlike his more uptight human counterpart, but he could be just as professional when needed. “Source of the signal is confirmed. Identification of the suspect has been confirmed as well. It’s Jimmy Mackey, an employee who was let go for lack of sales, and the source is his apartment, located approximately five minutes away.” He paused, looking over at Aiba and Mabo, before continuing, “By car, anyway.”

For a moment, Aiba was afraid that Sakurai really would make him take the bike there, but then the other agent sighed and nodded to the car. “Let’s go. We only have ten more minutes before his deadline.”

The apartment complex had seen better days, and its elevator certainly wasn’t an express, but it got them to Mackey’s door before the deadline, if just barely. Gussan confirmed that the signal was coming from inside, then said to Mabo, “Look and learn, kid.”

Sakurai didn’t say anything like that to Aiba, even though he was the training agent, but he did tell Aiba to keep behind him and to not touch anything, and Aiba decided to believe it was almost the same thing.

They caught Mackey by surprise, but he turned out to have a couple of things in his favor. One was the fact that he was damn big, making even Aiba feel short. The second was that he was kind of crazy and looked like a biter, and both Sakurai and Aiba had had enough of that after their last case. And three, Mackey only had to press one button to drop the elevator, and his finger was resting right on it when they came through the door.

Fortunately Gussan was also fast, initiating his own hack even as Mackey was pressing down on the key. By the time Sakurai and Aiba had managed to wrestle Mackey to the ground, miraculously free of any bites that time, Gussan had the elevator moving at its more usual express descent, the board of directors still bruised and outraged, but no more damaged, and Mabo had the police on the way.

Gussan told Mabo, “Good job,” as they left, but all Aiba got from Sakurai was an acknowledging nod and a somewhat aggrieved complaint of, “Why do we always get the biters?” Aiba decided to believe it was almost the same thing.

*<|:-))

The cell phone that Aiba worked with was officially called Four and had the habit of asking the agents in their group to call him Matsu-ni, but Ohno was the only one who ever called him that, everyone else sticking with Mabo. Mabo was… well, even after a month, Aiba couldn’t really say what Mabo was. Odd, yes. A little manic, definitely. But also sweet and helpful in his own odd and manic way. All the other phones, even the ones not in their group, always liked him. Aiba had to admit he could have done worse.

Gussan, Sakurai’s partner, was officially Two, but he had a tendency to give the silent treatment to anyone who called him that. If he hadn’t already been paired with Sakurai, he might have been a good fit for Aiba. Mellow and a good teacher, he was the perpetual older brother to the other phones. But then Aiba’s supreme moments of airheadedness might have driven Gussan crazy eventually, and Gussan was pretty single-minded about talking about surfing, especially for something that would likely short-circuit if he ever hit the ocean. All things considered, it was probably for the best that things had worked out as they did.

Nino called his partner Shigeru, even though the roster listed him as One and everyone else called him Leader. Leader, an older model, wasn’t as fast as the others, and had a bug here or there, but Nino was the one that needed the least technical help out of their group anyway, so they worked well together. Their personalities oddly fit too. Leader never took it hard when Nino picked on him, and Nino never seemed to mind when Leader disappeared for a while, only showing back up when someone called him.

Three, called Taichi even by the engineers, worked with Ohno. It was almost like the inverse of Nino and Leader, with Taichi being the sarcastic one and Ohno just letting it roll right off him, and Ohno tending to space out from time to time. But they also worked well as a pairing, Taichi more than willing to fill in Ohno’s silences with the sound of his own voice, and Ohno not only unconcerned that Taichi was far fonder of the color apricot than any cell phone really should be, but even going so far as to paint swirls and flowers all over his body, like tiny little apricot tattoos. Sometimes the Chief looked at both of them a little sideways, but neither of them seemed to care.

The last phone in their group was Five, called Tomoya-Baby by some of the phones in the Osaka branch, but generally called Nagase by everyone else. He worked with MatsuJun, but it was an odd couple to say the least. MatsuJun was smooth and good-looking, and dressed to match, using the look to charm the suspects, the public, the staff, or whoever it took for him to get information faster and to be even better at his job. Nagase on the other hand tended to have dents and batters on his body and grease on his key pad. He always got the job done, but he liked to have fun along the way, his .wav file laugh booming out of his speakers whenever he was amused. But for all MatsuJun’s star looks and perfectionist ways, you could still sometimes hear his laughter echoing Nagase’s as they walked the halls of the agency together, both of them the youngest in their groups, but both of them just as likely to save the day as their sempai.

*<|:-))

Aiba had just been looking to play a little basketball that first time. He’d been new to his school, new to the neighborhood, and it was hard enough to make friends in either of those situations. Add to it that it had been only four months away from end of the school year and he was already a year three student at that and even Aiba’s boundless optimism failed in the face of trying to find his place in the groups and friendships that had formed over the years and were unlikely to change for one skinny, kind of poor, and not very academically minded newbie.

Missing his old friends and the fun they used to have on the court, he’d skipped out of the house one evening, taking his scooter around the local parks looking for a pickup game he could join. What he’d found was a flying tire that had hit him in the head and knocked him off the bike.

He’d been dazed by the blow, the pain from the scrapes he’d taken just starting to register when the thing that had thrown the tire, and the car it had come off of, arrived on the street in front of him, looking like a yellow, mechanical Godzilla. It was a construction crane, one of the new ones with the fancy computer controls and the multiple-function arms, but it wasn’t constructing anything at the moment, destruction being more its thing as it attacked cars and bystanders with deadly force, the red _In Use_ light on its roof looking like a demon’s eye as it ran down its prey.

By the time Aiba had managed to get up, everyone else had either managed to flee or fall victim to the crane, which made him the sole target. He never could explain how he’d managed to avoid all the attacks that followed. Part luck and part desperation was what Chief Nagano thought. But Sakamoto… he’d said it was also inherent talent, one Aiba had never had reason to tap into before then, but that Sakamoto figured would make him valuable to the agency.

Sakamoto had certainly come to appreciate Aiba’s talent that night. He’d screeched onto the scene with tires squealing (and Mabo scolding him about the speed limit as he did) and right as Aiba had finally been cornered, the hero riding in to save the day just in the nick of time. He’d told Aiba to run, then thrown himself into the fight in his place, even as he’d thrown Mabo at the crane’s controls. Mabo had shouted that cell phones weren’t made for throwing and Sakamoto had shouted as the crane managed to get in a hit, but in the end they’d shut the machine down.

If Aiba had run as he’d been told, that would have likely been it. Aiba would have gone home, bruised but safe, and Sakamoto would have been killed outright when the hacker controlling the crane overrode Mabo’s work and started it up again. As it was, Sakamoto took a lot of hits before Aiba stopped panicking long enough to try to follow Mabo’s instructions about getting him to the crane’s server box. In the end, Aiba had had to do just what Sakamoto had, even though Mabo shouted again about the throwing, but at least he’d gotten the phone to where it needed to be, and at least he’d managed to avoid death and dismemberment by crane long enough to pull Sakamoto out of the way and for Mabo to shut the hacker out for good.

That might well have been it, also. Aiba would have been sent home after he was patched up and then sworn to silence about the super-secret agency he hadn’t so much stumbled across as they’d stumbled over him. Walking, talking cell phones, with human partners (that were a statistically improbable group of really good-looking young men), and they all fought cyber crime? Outside of a couple of die-hard conspiracy geeks in Akihabara, who would believe him?

But then Sakamoto had tried to finish the mission to find the hacker, and Aiba, feeling both guilty and grateful that the man had saved him, and that Sakamoto had been badly hurt in process, had taken the mission on instead, Mabo complaining about it all the way, but working well with him all the same.

And, once again, that might have been it, the mission over, and Aiba even more banged up than he had been and starting to think that home didn’t sound all that bad after all. But then Nagano had met them at the agency doors, looking tired and sad. Aiba’s heart had hurt and Mabo had looked as near tears as a cell phone could, but it turned out Sakamoto hadn’t died, just retired, saying, and Nagano quoted him, that he was too old for that shit anymore.

The tired and sad look on Nagano’s face turned out to be because Sakamoto had named Aiba as his replacement. Nagano, not to mention the other agents who’d been officially recruited and had to go through an interview process as well, hadn’t really agreed, obviously. But they took Sakamoto’s word as law, the only reason he hadn’t been made Chief being that he’d liked the field too much to give it up. Until he’d come up against an upstart crane, at any rate.

Sakamoto had taken Aiba aside and told him to not listen if they said he wasn’t a proper agent, and to not care if he didn’t fit in right away. Because Aiba had managed to survive the crane when even Sakamoto had had trouble with it, and because Aiba, even if he hadn’t done it gracefully, had managed to complete the mission intact. But even more so, because Aiba had stayed to help when he could have fled and had gone in Sakamoto’s place when he really should have been in bed himself.

Whatever anyone else had thought, Sakamoto had been sure that Aiba belonged. Once again part of group that had formed before he got there and that didn’t seem all that keen to be friendly, all that Aiba was sure of was that the agency seemed a lot like school. Still, he had a partner who was a walking, talking cell phone and together they fought cyber crime, and how cool was that?

*<|:-))

The cell phones had commands and functions that required human permission for the phones to use. It was all in the manual, or at least so Aiba had been told, though he’d never quite got around to verifying it since the manual was about as thick as the city directory, and just about as interesting. The commands were supposed to be shouted, crisp and clear and with no hesitation that might lead the phone to think you weren’t sure of your decision. During his training, however, Aiba had found that it really depended on both the phone and the human whether that rule was actually followed.

Sakurai, who’d been recruited to the agency because of his superior grades and his excellent communication and leadership skills, rarely shouted. He was being groomed for management, and often tried to be on his dignity, something that shouting didn’t really lend itself to. But then he also got flustered when things went wrong (especially if there was biting involved), with both his pitch and his volume shooting up with his stress, and the command tending to come out as a less than dignified squeal. Gussan, of course, just took it all in stride.

Ohno never shouted either. He’d been recruited by the agency for his physical grace and his out-of-the-box thinking, though neither one of them had turned out to be all that handy on the face of things. But just like in most things the two of them did together, where one wasn’t all that strong, the other filled in the gap, and Taichi could shout the commands loud enough for both of them, while Ohno just nodded and then they both got on with the job.

MatsuJun was elite even in an agency full of them, headhunted while still in middle school, his self-assurance and charisma a great asset on the job. He was far too cool to shout… but Nagase was far too much of a dork to let him get away with it. In fact, except in emergencies, Nagase usually made his partner not only shout, but sing _Muscle Man, Go Fight!_ as well. After one mission, when MatsuJun had come back with holes cut in his shirt so that his nipples poked out and Nagase had come back giggling, and neither of them willing to explain, MatsuJun had taken to shouting and singing without any prompting at all.

Nino liked to shout. He also liked to sing _Muscle Man, Go Fight!_ accompanied by what looked like the Kamen Rider henshin hand gesture followed by a Sailor Moon-like twirl at the end. Leader just put up with it, but Aiba and Mabo were both happy when Nino offered to teach it to them after a shared mission one day.

*<|:-))

In Aiba’s sixth week with the agency, he’d come across Nino and Ohno whispering in the corner, both their phones off doing something that neither of them would talk about, and that made Ohno’s tanned cheeks pink up. They’d pulled him into the corner with them, sending Mabo off with instructions to not let Leader and Taichi break anything, and then set about destroying Aiba’s vague case of hero worship for MatsuJun.

“No, no, he’s just as cool as he seems, except…” Nino trailed off, looking at Ohno with that strange, eye-oriented form of sign language they both seemed to speak.

Ohno shrugged, looking at Aiba’s shoes as if they might have the word he was looking for. And maybe they did, because he picked up where Nino had left off. “With the love thing.”

Nino rolled his eyes, used to Ohno understanding him, but not being able to express it properly, and not above making fun of him for it. “By which he means that any time MatsuJun falls in love, make sure you get out of the way as quickly as you can. He loses all sense when it happens, and he’s likely to take down anyone nearby when he does.”

Aiba was pretty sure they weren’t trying to trick him, as both of them had been much friendlier than when he’d started. Ohno had even started doing the Sailor Moon twirly bit whenever Taichi had to shout the commands. But even so, Aiba was still finding it hard to believe that someone that looked and acted like MatsuJun was anything less than romance novel perfect when it came to love.

But Ohno nodded earnestly. “He once fell in love with a street busker, and he made Inocchi go with him to listen. For hours. In January. Inocchi had pneumonia for a week after that.”

Nino pulled Aiba in closer, the three of them almost on top of each other in the corner as he spilled out more horrors. “He invited Morita to his grandparent’s house on the beach for Golden Week, but then only talked about his new boyfriend for the entire time. All day, every day. That’s why you see Morita and Inocchi together so much, because they formed a support group.”

To which Ohno added, “Miyake, Okada, Koyama, Nishikido, Yoko, and Murakami are all members as well.”

Aiba had taken the warning to heart, but, as with so many other things in his life, even being forewarned wasn’t enough to keep him out of trouble.

It had all happened when Nagano had told them they had a new case: a hacker who targeted large corporations and either blackmailed them with what he’d found, or sold off the information to competitors. Nagase had been in the lab, Head Engineer Tokoro having decided that all that grease on his keys couldn’t be good for him (but really just wanting to talk shop with Nagase), so Nagano had assigned MatsuJun to go with Aiba and Mabo as backup.

It was a mission, something that MatsuJun had always been so serious about before, so Aiba had let his guard down. Aiba also hadn’t known that MatsuJun had literally run into a guy while he was out buying the new issue of _Margaret_ at lunch time, and that he’d decided it had to be a fated meeting, the one true love of his life. It wasn’t until MatsuJun had trapped Aiba in the same corner Nino and Ohno had, a vague story about a ‘suspect’ using a cell phone at the corner convenience store earlier that day and how they had to get Mabo to track down the phone number of said ‘suspect’, that Aiba began to think that he should just take Nino and Ohno’s advice and run. But between a strange combination of puppy-dog eyes and firm smacks to the head whenever Aiba started to question anything, MatsuJun managed to get the number he wanted, and then left Aiba and Mabo to figure out the case on their own.

Even then things might not have gone too badly, since the fated true love, Kame, seemed to like MatsuJun in return. But neither MatsuJun’s luck (nor Aiba’s for that matter), ran all that smoothly, so of course he had turned out to be the hacker.

One small kidnapping, one improbable rescue (where Aiba only got a couple of bruises, and not one bite at all), and one hell of a punch by MatsuJun should have settled things, but… but Kame really did seem to like MatsuJun, and the reverse was certainly true.

It also turned out that Kame had his own walking, talking cell phone, and was part of a group that was sort of like Johnny’s, if not quite as organized. Okay, they hadn’t been fighting crime, but they had just been targeting corrupt companies and using the money to help out the victims. Even his phone, Takuya, was pretty nice once you got to know him (though he preferred the theme song for _Space Battleship Yamato_ to _Muscle Man_ , which Aiba wasn’t too sure about).

Johnny-san had reluctantly agreed not to set the police on Kame or his group, but had put his foot down about having anything more to do with them, and Nagano had backed him on it. It didn’t stop Nagano from letting MatsuJun leave early sometimes, though, or the guys from turning a blind eye now and again.

And at least once a week, Aiba and Mabo would take Nagase out to karaoke with them (Nagase being great in many ways, but having a tendency to blurt out personal secrets at _exactly_ the worst time, like it was a talent he’d been created with or something, so it was best to keep him out of the loop on some things). It was always a mess, with both the phones laughing when Aiba forgot the words, even when they were right in front of him, and Aiba having to keep reminding Nagase that stripping off his outer case wasn’t good for his circuits and Mabo that there were other singers besides Ei-chan, but they had fun anyway.

And if MatsuJun sometimes smiled at him a little misty-eyed or called Aiba Ma-chan when he’d been drinking too much milk, well, Aiba thought that was kind of fun, too.

*<|:-))

When Nino and Leader took Aiba and Mabo out to lunch, it was always to the cheapest place they could find. Nino was a tiny bit money-mad, so most of the time, even when he was the one who’d done the inviting, Aiba was still the one to pay. Leader always scolded Nino about it, at least, and he also always knew the best cheap places around (even though he didn’t actually eat), so Aiba was always happy to go.

When Ohno and Taichi took Aiba out to lunch, it was usually to someplace odd. Some weird fusion food, or a hundred different versions of ramen, or even something like Mapo Tofu bagels (which it turned out Aiba loved). Ohno and Taichi always liked whatever restaurant they found (no food ever tasted bad to Ohno), and after Ohno finished eating they’d sit and argue about whether Taichi could actually play in the J-League or not while Aiba struggled to get through his bowl of strawberry-vinegar pasta. But even with the hit-or-miss meals, Aiba was always happy to go.

When MatsuJun and Nagase took him out to lunch, MatsuJun would analyze each dish, trying to figure out what was in it and how it was made, and Nagase would stare at every bite either of them took, obviously regretting the lack of a digestive system. Mabo would try to distract Nagase with the ‘who was the best singer of all time’ game, but it always wound up with Mabo insisting it was Ei-chan (complete with audio samples to prove his point), followed by Nagase blowing electric raspberries at him and MatsuJun having to remind them about the whole cell phone/super-secret agency/trying to keep a low profile thing. Not the most relaxing of meals. But even with the analyzing and the staring and the eternal Ei-chan love, Aiba was always happy to go.

Sakurai and Gussan never asked Aiba to lunch.

*<|:-))

Sakurai had requested that Nino back him up, but Nagano had assigned Aiba instead. “He’s almost finished with his training, so I want him to work some more with my best agent before I move him up.”

Gussan had given a thumbs up to Aiba, the surfer riding a wave gif he usually had on his display screen replaced by a smile, but Sakurai had look annoyed. “This mission is kind of tricky, and there have already been some casualties, so I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

But Nagano had just waved him off. “He’s not quite as good as Sakamoto thought he would be, but then he just might be one day. He’s certainly ready to have the training wheels taken off soon. Just go.”

By that point, nearly three months in, there were few things about the job that Aiba wasn’t used to. Which was just as well, since then it wasn’t much of a surprise when Sakurai took off for their stakeout in his car and left Aiba to make his way on his bike. He did at least fill Aiba in on the mission when he got there, even going so far as to throw a handkerchief at him when Aiba started to drip sweat on the car’s clean interior.

“Someone is using a weapon that directs hyperwaves at a person’s brain. It makes the victim aggressive, sometimes even violent, and there have already been multiple cases of normally peaceful people starting fights, a case of road rage that led to a ten car pile-up, and there was a suicide that looked a little suspicious as well. And the incidents are occurring more frequently now, so it’s only going to get worse.”

Aiba had just nodded his understanding, his normal talkativeness subdued by Sakurai’s cool manner. And so they waited, in the middle of the area the techs had defined as the guy’s likely next target, both of them silent. The phones were both scanning, looking for transmissions that were in the range the weapon used, but they were joking with each other while they did it. Gussan tended to treat Mabo like his little brother, part supporting him, part mocking, and Aiba was a little envious, wishing Gussan’s partner might loosen up with Aiba as well.

But any time Aiba didn’t talk for too long, he always wound up blurting out what was on his mind without running any filters on it first. “You don’t like me, do you?”

Sakurai had started at the question, obviously not expecting the silence to be broken, but he took his time to think about it before he answered. “I guess you could say there’s something, though it’s not dislike, just wishing you weren’t here.”

Aiba couldn’t really see much of a distinction between the two, and either way it hurt. He wished he hadn’t said anything, since before he’d at least been able to kid himself about what Sakurai thought. “Okay. I get it.”

Sakurai frowned, looking unhappy. “Look, it’s not… well, I don’t mean… that is-“

Whatever he was trying to say, he didn’t get to complete it, as Gussan and Mabo both broke in when they picked up hyperwave transmissions in the right range just the next block over. They took the car, leaving Aiba’s bike behind, and even though it took less than a minute to get to the area in question, the silence between them seemed eternal.

Gussan and Mabo both got permission to access different functions, but the commands were simply given, no Muscle Man or Sailor Moon in sight. Gussan used his seeker function to pinpoint the weapon, and Mabo used his sound blaster function to try and find a counter-frequency that would cancel out the weapon’s effect. Unfortunately, Mabo couldn’t identify it fast enough to keep Aiba from getting hit by it.

Aiba was pretty sure he screamed, the pain in his head knocking him to his knees before it receded, a red wave of power and need flowing in to fill the space it had left. He was angry at Sakurai for not accepting that Aiba was as good at the job as the others, unconventional means of entering the agency or not. He was mad at him for being cool and collected when Aiba could only flounder around him. And he was angry at him for being so hot even with all that; smart and good-looking and funny, at least with the others, and Aiba was pretty sure the fluttering he got in his chest when Sakurai was around must be what MatsuJun felt like when he was with Kame. But Kame returned the feeling, and Sakurai wished Aiba wasn’t there, and the pain in Aiba’s heart stung even more than the pain in his head had.

Even under the influence of the hyperwave, Aiba remembered what Sakurai had said about its effects, but it didn’t stop him from acting on his own aggression. He grabbed Sakurai by his collar, pulling him closer, holding him still, and kissed him with everything he had. It wasn’t a shy kiss like he’d always imagined his first would be. It wasn’t sweet, either, the attraction behind it mixed with hurt and sadness. But it was still good, so good, the feel of those soft lips under his, slightly parted, a whisper of breath mixing with his own.

It ended between one heartbeat and the next, Mabo finally finding the right counter-frequency. Aiba didn’t even have time to be embarrassed before Sakurai took off, chasing down their guy and putting him in handcuffs before Aiba had managed to catch up.

Cool and collected, a consummate professional, Sakurai had ordered, “Gussan, alert the cops. Mabo, neutralize his power source just in case.”

But when Sakurai turned back to face him, he was as discomposed as Aiba had ever seen, though still more closed off than Aiba could take right then. All he said was, “It’s the _job_ ,” before he left, leaving Aiba behind.

*<|:-))

Aiba knew that sometimes he was an airhead. He’d been told often enough even if he had missed it himself. But even with that he had to admit he was a little confused.

By the time he’d managed to track down his bike and get it back from the kid who’d thought he’d made a lucky find, it was late, past the hour when most of the guys would normally be there. But they’d all been waiting for him, Nagano at their front, congratulating him on finally becoming a full agent of Johnny’s.

That hadn’t been the confusing part, since he’d been told it would happen soon.

They had brought out a cake and had him blow out the candles while all the phones, Gussan included, had sung _Muscle Man, Go Fight!_ for him, complete with the Kamen Rider henshin hand thing and the Sailor Moon twirl.

That hadn’t been the confusing part, either, since he knew them all now, and they were just that kind of great.

But Sakurai had been smiling with the rest of them, and Sakurai had congratulated him with the rest of them, and he’d even made the little twirl at the end, and that, all of that, had confused the hell out of Aiba.

Seeming to read his confusion (potentially using the eye-based sign language Ohno and Nino had been passing on to the others), Sakurai took him aside, leaving the rest of the guys to eat cake while Nagase (and Gussan, too) stared intently at them.

Over in the corner that was apparently everyone’s favorite place to drag him to, Sakurai said, “I tried to tell you before. It wasn’t dislike, it was the _job_. See, I worked so hard to be good at it, and I studied all the manuals, and I tried to be just what Johnny-san expected me to be.”

Aiba, still confused, couldn’t think what to say to that, so he just said, “I’m, er, sorry?”

But Sakurai shook his head and laughed. “No, don’t be. It’s just… you disconcert me. Ever since you came, things have loosened up around here. Nagano’s been less strict about the rules, and Nino’s been more of a brat than he’d ever been, and MatsuJun finally stopped trying to kill all of us in his search for love. Even the phones seem to feel it, since all of them seem more… well, human these last few months. And I thought it was wrong, that it would mess the agency up, but it hasn’t. Johnny-san might bluster and bark about some of it, but we’re still solving cases, and I… well, I finally figured out why it didn’t bother me when the others laughed and had fun while working with me, but it bothered me when you did.”

And, okay, Aiba knew that he was an airhead sometimes, but he was still pretty sure that Sakurai was saying he didn’t _dislike_ Aiba at all.

While he was trying to decide if he was brave enough to initiate another kiss without the excuse of the hyperwave, Sakurai kissed him first. It was shy and sweet and everything Aiba had expected. It was definitely even better than the first one.

What wasn’t so good was when it got interrupted by Nagase making smooching noises, and Mabo and Gussan mocking them, and Leader telling Nino that, no, he wouldn’t record it, since Nino would just use it for blackmail purposes. But then Taichi said he knew a great place that had like two hundred different kinds of gyoza, and Ohno’s eyes lit up at the thought of it, and Sakurai rolled his own eyes at all of them while Aiba laughed.

Which was pretty much normal for their group. And while there might always be some things that Aiba had trouble getting used to, this certainly wasn’t it.

/story


End file.
